


pretending and preposterous (such a storm of feelings)

by phantomreviewer



Category: The Book of Mormon - Parker/Stone/Lopez
Genre: Angst, Hopeful Ending, Internalized Homophobia, Introspection, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-06
Updated: 2017-05-06
Packaged: 2018-10-28 18:55:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10837341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phantomreviewer/pseuds/phantomreviewer
Summary: Kevin shouldn’t have started this conversation, and he didn’t know what had settled in his gut to force his hand. All he knew is that five minutes ago he couldn’t not have said those words to Elder McKinley, but now he would have turned the tide to have held them in check. Perhaps this was what Arnold felt every day, that he was built of words and thoughts and feelings that had to be let out, damn the consequences.Because 'turning it off' is not, and has never been a viable solution to anything, and feelings exist to be expressed and thoughts need to be put into words, otherwise they fester away into doubt and misunderstanding.





	pretending and preposterous (such a storm of feelings)

**Author's Note:**

> It's my birthday today, and to celebrate here have to unrelenting angst that only at the last moment becomes something hopeful. Title from 'Dust and Ashes' from Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812.
> 
> Beta'd, as ever by [slightlytookish](http://archiveofourown.org/users/slightlytookish/pseuds/slightlytookish).

Truth be told, Kevin didn’t know why he said it. It had been a day like any other, the sun baking down hot and heavy, and sweat dripping down necks and into eyes and almost everyone had been happy. Poptarts had sighed deeply as though lost in thought during the course of the day, but had seemingly shaken off the feelings like a dandelion seed in the breeze when Elder McKinley had put a hand on his bare arm and squeezed. Poptarts had started, dragged back into the moment, and then smiled, muttering something quiet and secret between mission companions and Elder McKinley had blossomed into peals of laughter.

Except it wasn’t laughter, it was giggling. Like a child. And he had clapped his hands together twice before turning so fast it could have been a pirouette into Mafala’s conversation with Elders Schrader and Davis.

The day had bled into soft, warm evening. A buffer between the harshness of day and the roughness of night. They were hosting a party, a get-together, a gathering of friends and laughter and love. And McKinley had giggled and Kevin didn’t understand his own thoughts. Isolated among friends and quiet among the noise.

Arnold was providing an astonishingly animated voice-over for the battered and clearly illegally bootlegged copy of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back that Nabulungi had somehow gotten hold of at the market and was now being beamed onto the side of the Mission Hut by an old and worn projector. And hadn’t Arnold lit up from the inside when she’d taken his hand and made him close his eyes so that she could give him a present, a worn out reel and a kiss. Kevin’s best friend was so happy out here. Accepted, loved and cheered.

Kevin wasn’t entirely sure how accurate Arnold’s dialogue was, having never seen the film before, but his words seemed to more or less add up to the fuzzy action on dusty brick and Kevin couldn’t deny that everyone was enjoying themselves. Arnold’s words had always pointed to something bigger, even when he did make them up.

He’d been enjoying the film, he’d been enjoying the evening in fact. Some downtime for all of them. There was no mandated curfew any more, there were no more rules. And yet something niggled at the back of his mind, and Kevin couldn’t quite settle on it.

So, under the setting sun he resolved to face it head on. That tactic hadn’t been the most profitable one out in Africa so far but it was what he knew – he didn’t have the imagination of Arnold. He created his parameters and he stuck to them. Even if he allowed them to change.

They had a water pump around the back of the Mission Hut, only for emergency use. But Kevin knew that Elder McKinley had a tendency to head into the shade and wet his face. A frivolous indulgence, back,  _ before _ . An insignificant one, now.

“Why do you always act like that?”

Elder McKinley startled when he spoke causing water to splash up against his shirt, tearing his attention from Kevin and down towards the now wet garment. Kevin could see the shadow of temple garments beneath the white cotton, the buttons showing through. Elder McKinley surely must be too hot wearing so many layers to keep the world out. Kevin’s own temple garments were pajamas now, worn and as a sacrament, to invoke memories of peace and home, but not a necessity. He had new needs now.

“Like what?” McKinley asked, only half present in the query, instead tugging at his collar and fanning ineffectually at the damp spread. Somehow that action annoyed Kevin further, although he couldn’t understand it enough to frame it into words.

Kevin expelled more air than he thought he’d had in his lungs, roughening his next words and resisting the urge to bat Connor’s hands away from his shirt. They were in Uganda, it was hot. His shirt would dry sooner without temple garments underneath. Water was going to dry.

“You know, so  _ gay _ .”

McKinley stopped, hands still and stupid held blindly in front of him, and the multitude of exactly what Kevin was saying struck him. Elder McKinley was his District Leader, although they were a District in disgrace and in the dust. Shut down and abandoned. All Kevin had wanted was a ticket home, and then they had refused to leave – Kevin leading the rising to stay. They were their own Church and McKinley and the thinly veiled authority he wielded was all that they had to remind them of what had been. McKinley was barely older than he was, and in his position with Kevin unknowingly angry and McKinley torn between fight or flight, Kevin was notably taller.

McKinley didn’t speak, slowly bringing his hands to his sides. Waiting. When an authority figure waited in silence for you to speak, you spoke.

It was anger and pity and something hot-slick and curling bubbling up in Kevin’s stomach as he found words to speak. They weren’t the words that he wanted to say, but there was a silence that needed filling, and an ache inside him which clogged up the thoughts in his head. He hadn’t eaten anything that the other Elders hadn’t, there was no illness or justification for his feelings or actions. They simply were.

“We know, we get it, it’s okay. You don’t need to be so over the top about it sometimes. If you didn’t act like that maybe…” Kevin said, faltering off and suddenly unable to meet McKinley’s eye.

He shouldn’t have started this conversation, and he didn’t know what had settled in his gut to force his hand. All he knew is that five minutes ago he couldn’t  _ not _ have said those words to Elder McKinley, but now he would have turned the tide to have held them in check. Perhaps this was what Arnold felt every day, that he was built of words and thoughts and feelings that had to be let out, damn the consequences.

The consequences were thrice-damned by the stillness of Elder McKinley when he replied.

As a District Leader Elder McKinley had always been animated, jovial and bright and false in a way that had grated on Kevin when he’d first arrived. No one should be that peppy in this situation, absorbing your emotions inwards was unhealthy, after all, if you worked hard enough and did exactly what Heavenly Father wanted then the only feelings that you should have were not the sort that ought to be ‘turned off’. This wasn’t the case, but Elder McKinley had only been so still once before, when the Mission President had looked straight through him, with talks of past trouble.

“Maybe what? Maybe it would be okay that I’m like this?” Elder McKinley said, jaw tight and voice clipped.

And that wasn’t fair. Hadn’t Kevin been the one to say that it was alright that Elder McKinley was having these thoughts as long as he didn’t act on them? Where everyone else had been blindly agreeing with this policy of repression? Kevin didn’t believe in holding things inwards, you were who you were regardless of ease or responsibility or consequence. Except. That wasn’t fair either, there wasn’t anything wrong with McKinley in thought or in action. Why should Arnold giggle and clutch at Nabulungi with hearts in his eyes without a second glance, yet the sight of McKinley acting according to his nature make Kevin flush white hot.

Perhaps he wasn’t being fair, but he didn’t understand. How could anyone choose to live like this? The aching, constant questioning.

“No. No. Just, you know it isn’t safe here to be like… you are.” Kevin said, again. Unwilling to put name to the word, to the deed.

McKinley sighed, stirred into action again. A brief breeze intercutting the scene, allowing him a moment’s grace to wipe down his hands down the side of his pants and look plaintively up at Kevin. He looked young, younger than Elder McKinley usually looked and for the first time since he’d first arrived in Uganda, someone looked at Kevin like he had all the answers. Unlike then, he now knew that he didn’t. He never had.

“I don’t understand what you want from me here, Elder Price. You were the one to say that it was okay if I broke the rules.”

Kevin had been caught up in the moment, in finally having found an answer to the questions that hadn’t made any sense back in Salt Lake City. Solutions to queries he hadn’t known, and new questions a source of hope, not fear. He had underestimated the power of his words, clearly. He’d been thinking more generally when he’d said that. But he’d been looking straight at Elder McKinley. Who had obviously been looking back. Kevin was used to being scrutinised, appraised and heaped with generous – and he’d considered at the time – well-earned reward. Being watched, however. Being watched and not listened to, but heard, was a different experience.

“It’s just. No, this is coming out all wrong. Just, you don’t have to act like  _ that _ anymore. We all know who you are,” Kevin said, plaintively, and that was the wrong thing to have said. As soon as the words left his mouth Kevin knew that he had not only misspoke but miss-stepped. This was a delicate balance, one that he had only just adjusted the course to, and he had just with one simple phrase knocked them entirely off balance.

“Elder Price,” McKinley stated, in what would have been an expressionless tone had his face not said it all. He was red-faced, suddenly burning like the sunset with spittle at the corner of his mouth, his generally affable expression fixed cold, and again he looked older.

How much of the lived experience of Elder McKinley was a performance, Kevin wondered, even as he registered with a distressed pang, that for the past few days he had been known simply as ‘Kevin Price’, the title was a demotion in affection, in friendship. He felt ill.

“You might very well ‘know who I am’ but I don’t have that luxury. I have been acting like someone else for ten years, every minute of my life I have had to pretend to be something that I’m not. You don’t have the right to tell me about being myself, about being authentic.”

Kevin had never been chastised at school - a straight A student - and the closest he had come to trouble was standing up for one of the boys who was being bullied. He had swaggered in and smiled, and people had told him that he was such a good boy for doing the right thing, but right now he couldn't remember the name of the kid who was being pushed against the lockers. Still McKinley continued.

“I almost envy you, coming here all fresh faced and trusting and learning about the world that way. I knew exactly what I was when I came out here, that I was a failure, and this mission only proved that. I could never be what I should have been, I couldn’t lead and I couldn’t stick to the rules and I couldn’t turn it off. So don’t you dare tell me to stop being myself. I am the only person that I have left anymore.”

McKinley had never raised his voice but as he finished he panted, wiping one hand to his forehead before rubbing across the bridge of his nose with thumb and forefinger. Kevin might be feeling cold, gooseflesh cropped up as McKinley had spoken, but it must be hot sweat on McKinley’s brow. Kevin might have made him angry- but there’s no way that Kevin could have made him cry.

“Elder McKinley,” Kevin said, and the tables were now turned. From only moments before where Kevin’s anger – and why had he been angry at all? It was illogical at best and actively cruel at worst; McKinley was trusting and brave and they were the same age, they had the same lived experience, why had McKinley’s actions and self-belief been enough to make him angry? – had directed the conversation, now he was drained. Drained, empty and asking. It was rude to take without giving.

Silence. Except, it wasn’t silent, Kevin could hear Arnold just beyond the Hut – ‘oh and now Han Solo is telling Princess Leia that he knows, and that he’s willing to go through carbonite and the fires of Mount Doom to keep her safe because he’ll do  _ anything _ for her’ -  and Kevin can’t not look at the unnatural pallor of McKinley’s face and the unrelenting falseness of his gaze. He looked so much better when he smiled, Kevin realised, when he really smiled. Not that painted grimace he gave when everything was supposed to be alright, but the look in his eyes when Kevin had looked to him and said that turning it off was not the answer. That look had been so open and innocent and truthful. 

He should always look like that. 

Why did he want Elder McKinley to stop smiling? There was nothing wrong with allowing Connor to be happy, he knew that. He had had hushed conversations with Elder Michaels about sexuality and how gay thoughts did not make you a bad person and that they had all liked Elder McKinley well enough when he had been repressing himself, and he was the same person just  _ authentic _ now. Why had Kevin allowed that authenticity to bother him, it had been what he had wanted, and yet something inside of him festered when it had happened, and ached when it had bled away into clinical, mechanical falseness. Due to his actions, Kevin didn’t understand, anger bled into confusion into jealousy and feelings should be shared, not kept hidden away from the light.

_ “I’m just feeling a little confused right now.” _

_ “Oh, confused. Well, Elder, that is natural. There certainly are a lot of things here in Uganda that can be disturbing.” _

“Connor.”

Hearing his name seemed to awaken something in Elder McKinley, and he jolted back. Recoiling away from the water pump and back into the present day as though he had been electrocuted. Kevin couldn't remember ever hearing anyone address McKinley by name, oh, it was in the files that he had read on the fight over to Uganda, just some background about his District. But even though Thomas is Poptarts and Arnold is well, Arnold, no one had ever humanised Elder McKinley. District Leader and representative of the Church among converts. Connor. Identities needed to be acknowledged and respected.

“I don’t believe we have anything else to say to each other, Elder Price, you will forgive my outburst and I will see you back at the hut after Sister Nabulungi’s choir practice. I’m assisting with the baritones, if that is acceptable to you.”

The barb was thinly veiled and Kevin knew that he had deserved that one, he hadn’t brought this about intentionally. But no the air had cleared and this thoughts made sense again. Now it was just the two of them talking without the distraction of why or who. Even though McKinley was clipped and speaking with that too-false, too-happy voice that the Hut had resonated with in those first days it was a place for Kevin to call his own.

“Connor. Wait,” Kevin started, although Elder McKinley had not yet started to walk away. “You’re not the only person you have left, you have all of us and you have me.”

And in almost the bravest single action that Kevin had taken since he stepped foot in Uganda and let his world unravel, he reached out and touched Elder McKinley, Connor’s hand. To make a human connection, to acknowledge that Connor was, and always had been, a person. To feel that spark of electricity.

“I hope you mean that, Kevin Price, I really hope you’re speaking sincerely now and I really hope you meant what you just said to me.”

His words were quiet, but Kevin heard every enunciation and insinuation that wasn’t there when Connor spoke and he felt the twitch, press and disconnect of Connor echoing his grip and returning it back, laden with meaning.

Connor smiled, and Kevin could not tell if it was genuine or fake, before he turned away from the pump and back to where their friends, brothers and sister waited – many not having noted their absence, unaware of the significance of what had played out scant yards away. Kevin himself wasn’t entirely sure either, no longer burning up or freezing over, but full. Content and deprived at the same time, with a tingle of electricity dancing in the palm of his hand.


End file.
